God's Road Crew (Dec. 10, 2023) Isaiah 40.1-11

You’re driving down the road and you see the signs: road work ahead. You may groan internally and get ready for the inevitable lane changes that are coming. And it seems that there is always some kind of road work going on these days. Roads are widened, repaired, and redone with new asphalt. If you head down 52 toward Winston-Salem, you will see some grand road work going on at the Rural Hall interchange. There the work on the new bypass is ongoing and one can see the landscape changes that are taking place there. Where once there were trees and hills, there is now a cut and a road carved out in the landscape. One can see where the road is and where the road is going. And the bypass itself that is completed is a wonder. I have been told that it takes off about fifteen minutes to go from Rural Hall to Greensboro now. I have traveled the road and have found that, yes, there is time cut off from traveling. I now no longer must travel into town to catch 421 or go to route 40. I can go through the bypass and travel a road that is smooth and barrier free.

Another road that I know that shows how travel can be upgraded is the West Virginia Turnpike. Growing up, this road was a nightmare. In some places it was two lanes and winding with the hills and valleys. There used to be a shirt that claimed, “I survived the WV Turnpike.” Then, in the 1980s there was new construction. Hills were cut down and valleys filled to make way for a major four lane highway. Travel time was cut and the road much smoother. That is not to say that there were no more mountains; there were and there still are. But these were able to be surmounted because of the new way of travel. One other improvement was that the four-lane road from the town of Lewisburg to Beckley opened which went around a mountain which has 76 switchbacks thereby making the road safer and more time efficient, though a lot less interesting.

One other aspect of these roads, both the bypass and the turnpike, is that they go through areas that are not heavily inhabited. When one went through the old roads, one would encounter towns and villages. Now the roads go through empty lands, a wilderness one might say. But in doing so the roads made a highway which is easily traveled and very much an improvement to the old travel.

Our text for today wanders into a lot of territory. From comfort to the wilderness to the word of “our God”, to the image of a warrior and shepherd. And a sermon on all of this can be done, but there would be a lot left out if looking closely at the text. Therefore, I am wanting to examine more closely the verses of three to five. There we find a word for Advent and a word that we need to hear from God.

To begin with, there is a call for comfort to be given to the people. They were in need of comfort. There had been a long time between the time of Isaiah 39 and Isaiah 40, about 150 years. In that time the nation of Judah saw the invasion of the land by the Assyrians, the bad king Manasseh who led the country into great wickedness and the good king Josiah who led them to turning back to the Lord. There was the death of Josiah at a young age and the nation falling further into apostasy. Then the ultimate blow came: The fall of the nation to the Babylonians and the razing of the city of Jerusalem and the temple, the home of God. The people were in exile and needed a word of comfort.

When the word comes it comes with a note that the iniquity and sins of the people have been pardoned. That they are no longer being punished for what they had done in the past.

Then comes the word of the Lord. It is not entirely certain who is to cry out that there is to be a highway to be built, but a voice does cry out. It tells that they are to make straight in the desert a highway for our God. That “Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.”[1]A superhighway some would call it. And look again for whom this highway is built. Not for the returning people but for God. It is akin to the highways that were built for the procession of kings and gods that the Babylonians made. This is to be a highway for the one God who is bringing comfort to the people of Judah. It is to be a highway that is built for the people as well. No longer are they to travel the long way around to get back to Judah from Babylon, but they will now have a highway straight from the land of exile to the land of their ancestors.

This highway is also a highway of reconciliation. The people are reconciled to their God and God is reconciled to them. But to have reconciliation there must be an admission of wrongdoing. There must be an asking of forgiveness by those who have committed the wrongdoing. And there must be forgiveness given by the wronged party.

The people of Judah are the ones who did the wrong. They were given a land and a charge to be a light to the nations around them. They were to call people to follow their God and to bring them into the fold. But they followed other gods and made a mockery of what they were called to do. They were faithless and turned from the one who led them out of the wilderness once and who promised to do right by them always. Now they were contrite and ready to come back to God. And God forgives them and calls them to be comforted. The road is to be made, the way that was hard is now to be made easy. When this occurs the glory of the Lord will be seen and known by all those who see it. It is because the mouth of the Lord spoke it.

John the Baptist was a voice calling out in the wilderness. He was calling the people to repent, to come back to the Lord. His call was, as noted, a call of repentance. Now, repentance is more than just saying that one is sorry and moving on from what one apologized. It is a turning around, doing a 180 and going in the opposite direction of where one was going. It is a change of life. Being sorry is only part of it. One needs to move forward and show that things have changed. One needs to repent.

And when one repents, there can be reconciliation with God and with each other. How many families have been torn apart because one person did something that another did not approve of and therefore there was a rending of the family? The persons cannot move forward because of the hurt and resentment that was caused by the one. It is only when one party is willing and able to say, “I’m sorry” that healing and reconciliation can begin.

And it is not easy. Fleming Rutledge stated that reconciliation is not for the weak. It is for the strong. Only the strong can admit that there is a problem and that there is need of forgiveness both to be given and to be received. You see, receiving forgiveness is hard. One must admit that one did something wrong and that there is need of forgiveness. On the flip side, one who is giving forgiveness has it as hard if not harder. That person must admit that they were hurt by the one in need of forgiveness. I saw a meme the other day that said, “You couldn’t heal because you kept pretending you weren’t hurt.” This is truth. One cannot move forward unless one admits that one was hurt. And sometimes the hurt becomes a ball of resentment that stays in ones stomach and eats away at your heart. It becomes the sole feeling that one has toward the one who hurt them. When this occurs, there is no reconciliation. But when one admits that one was hurt, when one admits that they hurt someone, reconciliation can occur. Then there can be peace in the lives of those reconciled.

Today we lit the candle of peace. We cannot know peace with God until we recognize that we are in need of reconciliation with God. When we are reconciled with God then peace can occur. When we admit that we need to repent, to turn around and go the other way, then we can be reconciled with God. And we have a way to be reconciled. That way is Jesus Christ. It is only through him that we can be fully reconciled. During this time of Advent, when we hope that the light will overcome the darkness, let us have peace as well by being reconciled to the one who makes a superhighway through the wilderness and makes the way easy to be reconciled to our God. The road crew is working, are we ready to take the road made? Amen.

[1] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989. Print.